Kickstarting tremulus

I've blogged before about my enjoyment of tabletop role-playing games. Hopefully, it's not a shock to many of you that I happen to be that nerdy. :) In my almost-never-ending quest to find the One and True Role-Playing System for Every Genre, I've seen a lot of rules systems. And while I'm currently having a lot of fun learning the detailed nuances of the Savage Worlds core rules and Super Powers Companion, I keep my eyes open for supplemental material that I can use in my games. My search led me to Reality Blurs, Sean Preston's purveyor of fine RPG settings. With supernatural spy action in Agents of Oblivion, mind-bending Mythos mysteries in Realms of Cthulhu, and steampunk and shadow adventures in RunePunk, they've become my favorite third-party publisher for Savage Worlds material.

Crafting Caldera

I like to think of myself as a creative person. No, I'm not an amazingly productive person always churning out new ideas, but there's something about mashing concepts together and seeing what bubbles to the top that intrigues me. I think that's one of the reasons I enjoy role-playing games—tabletop or video versions—so much. I'm able to explore a story and possibly add my own twists to it. It's a little difficult to do much with my ideas in video games, since I'm not generally a fan of "head canon," but when it comes to the tabletop, the sky's the limit.

Which is why I've been working recently on my own superhero campaign setting. It's nothing flashy—I don't have maps drawn up for anything—but I've enjoyed working on it. It's been a project to keep my mind active during periods of downtime that would otherwise see me obsessively checking my email, RSS feeds, and Kickstarter project pages. (More on Kickstarter later. ;) )

More on Indoctrination

It's been a while since I published my last post, talking about my pre-Extended Cut views on the Indoctrination Theory for Mass Effect 3, but the past few months have given me some time to reflect on exactly how I feel about that particular interpretation of the trilogy's end. Unsurprisingly, I no longer feel that the Indoctrination Theory as a whole is really the answer to all the questions Mass Effect 3's ending left. It was a wonderful example of literary (or video-gamerary #it'sgonnabeathing) interpretation and how a loyal fanbase can extrapolate fantastic narratives out of ambiguous endings. And while it seems that Bioware has brought the hammer down on the Indoctrination Theory with the Extended Cut, I still believe the basic idea—an outside force playing with Shepard's perceptions—is valid.

The Backlog War and Indoctrination

Last week wasn't terribly productive for me, for a variety of reasons. I am happy to report, however, that the Great Backlog War of 2012 rages on, and by all accounts, I'm winning. Just yesterday, I was able to knock both New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Trine off my list. This is a special victory for me since Trine has been sitting in my virtual pile of Steam games for at least two years. I now only have 29 games to get through before the end of the year, many of which I already have some measure of progress in. I should be finishing Arkham City any day now, and Alan Wake shouldn't be that far behind. (Unfortunately, Final Fantasy 2 may take some time. I'm currently stuck in a tower with a bunch of enemies who can turn my party members against each other. :( )

When I write, I SCAMPER

Since I spent an entire post last week detailing the tools I use in the actual composition of my writing, I thought I'd make you all familiar with one of the conceptual tools I like to use. This acronym—mentioned in the title of this post—is probably familiar to most of you, and if so, I apologize for taking your time. For those of you who aren't familiar with SCAMPER and its component ideas, please continue reading. I really think you'll get something useful out of it.

Mass Effect 3

We've come a long way since 2007 when the original Mass Effect was released, and Commander Shepard et al. have had quite the ride along the way. From saving the galaxy from Sovereign in the first game to defeating the Collectors in the second, Mass Effect 3 finds our stalwart commander ... in prison? What kind of opening scene is that? Oh, right. I guess he did work with a known terrorist group and—spoiler warning if you haven't played ME2 DLC "Arrival"—destroy a mass relay in batarian space and wipe out that entire solar system. I guess it's not that big of a surprise that the Alliance brass stripped him of his command and tossed him in the brig. But when the Reapers do finally arrive and start harvesting Earth, who do you think the Powers That Be expect to save them? Funny how life turns out, huh?

Writing Tools

While I'm working my way through the endgame of Mass Effect 3, it appears that much of my thought is focused on my writing. This doesn't really come as a shock to me since as a story junkie, I'm often inspired to think of my own stories while experiencing someone else's. (The Great Backlog War of 2012 continues, though, and I'm making significant progress on this particular front.) As I was putting the finishing touches on Monday's post, I started thinking about the status of the outline for my steampunk murder mystery story, and that made me consider the writing tools I'm currently using. I know there are a lot of great options for novel-writing software, but I thought that I'd take a minute or ten and walk you all through the software I use. Hopefully, it will also help me evaluate how well these programs fulfill my needs as a writer, and maybe even generate some comments from you all that will help me find something even better.

Why I can't wait to write (but definitely need to learn how)

It seems that I've been in rather an introspective mood lately, and while sometimes uncomfortable, I feel my navel-gazing has uncovered several useful realizations about why I am the "unique" person I am, especially concerning why and how I want to write. But first, here's a mythology lesson!

Have you ever heard the name Zeus? You know: Greek guy, throws lightning bolts, does very strange things while wearing the forms of animals. Well, Zeus--father of the gods and of men, god of the sky and thunder--was very fond of procreating. He had several wives and consorts and ended up with over 60 children, and that's just counting the ones from his wives who were actually goddesses. One of Zeus's daughters, Athena, was purportedly born fully formed from Zeus's forehead (not something I ever want to experience as a father, by the way).

"What does this have to do with writing?" you may ask. "Greek mythology is so last decade!"

E3 2012 and Kludging

I don't know about you all, but I found this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) a tad underwhelming. It seemed like most of the Big 3 (Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo) were playing things fairly safe, sticking to established franchises or established developers. Granted, Nintendo was showing off the WiiU, but even that was an unrisky move for them considering that the console has been in the works for a while. There weren't really the blockbuster announcements one would usually expect from a conference like this, but maybe I'm just getting jaded about the gaming industry. I've been playing video games for over 20 years now (that's a weird fact to realize), and I suppose that I've lost some of my enthusiasm for the evolutionary improvements in gaming. But I will admit that watching coverage of the conference has given me some things to look forward to. Now, I just need to work on getting really excited about them. I can't promise rabid fanboy levels of excitement--since I find the console wars too ridiculous to really worry about--but there are a lot of things I'm looking forward to in the year of gaming to come.

The Great Backlog War of 2012 - First Report

In my last post, I mentioned that I had officially declared war on my backlog, and last night (early this morning, really), I had my first victory. Diablo (3) now lies conquered at my feet. While the final stretch was a harrowing battle—one which woke me from an impromptu 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. nap and kept me up until nearly 4 a.m.—I feel that I am stronger for it. (Sleepier, too, but that's a different matter entirely.)

Overall, I felt that Diablo 3 was a well put together game, as hack-n-slash action RPGs go. The combat was fairly solid, the visuals were engaging, and the voice acting was very well done. There are a lot of changes made in this interation of the series, and at first, I was planning on railing on the new mechanics. But as I thought more about some of the nitpicky complaints I had with the game, I realized that most of them were coming up because this game isn't Diablo 2. And while that's not a bad thing, the realization that my judgment had been colored by my experience with a previous title helped me reevaluate how I wanted to comment on what I saw in the new game.

Sticking With It

Here's something you may not know about me: I really enjoy playing tabletop role-playing games. (Oh, don't act so surprised about it. You've all known how strange I am for a long time. :) ) I suppose I should say that I really enjoy running tabletop role-playing games—since that's what I've mostly been doing in the hobby for the past couple years—but I still consider the narrator/storyteller/gamemaster to be playing the game, so it's pretty much the same thing. But as I've been looking at my RPG hobby habits, I've noticed a very disturbing trend, one that I've also seen reflected into my other hobbies and even my non-recreational endeavors.

I have a hard time staying with things.

Tetris and Story Addiction

As enjoyable as our trip back to New England two weeks ago was, I'm starting to regret the amount of time I took off work. For some reason, it seems that whenever I take more than eight hours of vacation time, I end up needing to take another eight or so hours of sick time just to shake whatever disease I come down with upon my return. Luckily, it's usually nothing more serious than a head cold or an allergy flare-up, but it's still a little irritating (and embarrassing, because I always feel like an idiot when I have to take sick time after just taking a bunch of vacation).

My New Project

Well, welcome to my new blog. I seem to have fallen into a bit of a creative slump over the last year, and I'm hoping that this will help me break out of it. Mostly by forcing myself to write something semi-regularly and putting it up where people can read and discuss it. (Who knew that a nerd like me would end up needing so much social interaction?)

Let me explain the point behind this site. A few years ago, I started up a little game review blog that eventually went nowhere. (You can look at the dessicated corpse here, if you like.) And one of the issues I ran into was that it felt a little too constrained for me. I have a lot to say (apparently), and some of it doesn't necessarily fit in well with reviews and news about all the facets of modern-day gaming. I also fancy myself something of a fiction writer, and that kind of thing definitely doesn't belong on a gaming blog. Locke'd Life is here to serve as my general purpose canvas, to let me write what I want to write and put it all up in one convenient(ly ignorable) place on the internet. I'm hoping that what I post will have some value and be relevant to at least a small portion of the world's population, but at the very least, the act of writing it will be of value to me.

So why "Locke'd Life"? Do I feel trapped by my surroundings and situation? Am I raging against the machine or despairing at my intellectual impotence? Nope. I'm using that title because I find it catchy, and also because "Locke" has become kind of an internet pseudonym for me. There have been many theories as to why I frequently use Locke to identify myself online (philosopher John Locke, fictional ideologue Locke from Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, that crazy bald guy from Lost), but I'm proud to say that it's because of a video game and a great group of friends on an online message board.

You see, Final Fantasy VI (known in the US as Final Fantasy III) was the very first video game I ever purchased with my own money, and it was also the very first role-playing game I had ever played through. (I had fits and starts with the Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy IV (II, in the States), but never really got into them.) In the opening chapter of the game, a gallant and swashbuckling thief is introduced, a character that I instantly identified with for his chivalrous nature. Can you guess his name?

Locke Cole became something of a video game idol to me, and I still hold a very special place in my heart for good-natured and honorable rogues everywhere. And when the internet became the Next Big Thing, I carried my special regard for Mr. Cole online with me, taking lockecole_13 as my very first Hotmail address. The years progressed, and I soon found myself at BYU, interacting with members of Quark, the campus's science fiction and fantasy club. The club runs a messageboard for its members, and still hanging on to my fascination with Mr. Cole, I took "Locke" as my username. Over the five-plus years I've been a member of Quark, Locke has stopped being just my handle and has become part of my actual identity. In fact, most of the Quarkies I talk to off-line call me Locke instead of my actual first name. It just seems to fit now.

TLDR: Welcome to my Locke'd Life. Hope you enjoy your stay.